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Monday, August 06, 2007

New Beginning 333

"Christ!"

Stan's grandma grimly went about the business of disinfecting the apartment. She pushed strands of hair out of her face and grunted. "What a pigsty, and I don't mean maybe."

Stan sat on the corner of the couch. He had pulled his feet up off the floor because his grandma had to get the broom up under the couch. She swept out yellowing newspaper pages, toys, bits of food, and one or two unidentifiable items.

"Hey, there's my Army tank!" Stan reached down into the pile of trash and retrieved his missing toy.

"Mother of Christ. I do believe that's a dead mouse." She poked something with her broom and glared at Stan's dad. "Jesus, Jackie, come on! I taught you about being clean. You know what can happen if thing's ain't kept clean!"

"What, ma? Come on, what?" Stan's dad was preoccupied. "I got some money on this game, you know?" He sat in his armchair, chain smoking, his foot on the coffee table tapping endlessly.

Stan threw his army tank onto the coffee table and dropped his pants. "Number two, coming through!" He squatted next to the litter box and pushed everything out.

Grandma shooed him away with her broom. "Mother of Mother of Christ. We need TWO litterboxes around here. And I don't mean maybe."

"Will you two keep it down?" Jackie crushed a cigarette on the armchair and reached for another.

"I'll show you what!" the old lady screamed, her face distorting, fang growing , hair sprouting from her sagging boobs. In seconds, a hideous half-wolf, half-zombie, half-harpy leaned towards him on his mother's walker.

"This, and if I was any younger, I'd show you what I could do with a nasty-mouthed youngster like you, you, you, you, ungrateful bastard."

Author, this beginning definitely got me curious, and I got a great feeling for granny's colorful language as well as something about Stan's family housekeeping. Not sure that knowledge is leading us anywhere important, though, if the focus is on Stan. (Because you call the father "Stan's dad" I assume Stan is going to be the main character here.)

Anyhow, this is bordering on parody already so you might look at the following bits and tone the housekeeping details if they are just used to establish mood or the setting/situation. This opening lends itself to some really, um, ripe parody. It's only 150 words, though, so the usual codicils apply. I'd have to read more to really form an opinion about this being over the top.

This does a very good job of painting a scene; I feel like I've got a grip on all the characters' personalities.

A person could argue the characters are stereotypical, but I would say archetypal - I found them recognizable and funny.

However, there's nothing to draw me into the story. No one has a problem to solve except Grandma, and she appears to be solving it. There's no real tension and no reason for the reader to care about the characters.

Thanks for the inputs, everyone (and of course to Evil for posting this for comments). It's tough to show much of the narrative arc and direction in 150 words but I think takoda's parody (which I thought was effing excellent, btw) definitely highlights some areas where I might want to take some heavy-grade sandpaper to some of the more, hemm, florid turns of the phrase. :-0

This opening is very vivid, but it left me feeling like the author is going to use a bunch of cheap tricks to get emotional effect. Like I'm being manipulated into feeling sorry for poor little Stan because he lives in squalor, he's presumably motherless, and his father is a racetrack junkie. I mean, okay, that's not good, but maybe if you could show me something about Stan instead of just telling me how bad things are?